Wednesday, July 10, 2013

We're with you, Marion.

“Do
you think Bartoli’s dad told her when she was little: You are never going to be a looker, you’ll never be a Sharapova, so you
have to be scrappy and fight?”

Note that he had the gumption to bring her
down several notches: deeming her “ugly” in her father’s eyes.

Those words belong to John Inverdale.
Through his absolutely intolerable words on Marion Bartoli as she waded through
crowds to hug her father on his victory, Inverdale verbally reiterated the undercurrent of
rampant sexism that hasn’t spared sport, either.

So here's the deal. No matter what, it’s always about ‘looks’. What she wears. The shape of her nose. How
broad-shouldered she is. The colour of her skin. The texture of her hair. The
colour of her outfit. The length of her outfit.

Not her game, not her skill, not her
talents, not her victory.

As Inverdale was yammering away, twitter
was full of rude comments – one having gone too far as to say that she was too
“ugly to rape”. Some called her a fat slob and some, ugly bitch.

Welcome to the world where a woman’s appearance
is everyone’s business. A world where fairness creams flourish as a business
proposition, a world where acid can and is thrown on the face of a woman at a
man’s whim, a world where a woman’s talents pale into nothingness while her
appearance is judged at the forefront, a world where what a woman wears is a
man’s business,.

A man can go for a “jog” wearing the
tiniest of shorts and tightest of vests while rolls of his fat bound off in
different directions while he waddles about. Oh but he’s not ugly. Or fat. Or a
slob. Or anything.

It doesn’t matter what
a woman achieves. She is a woman, and that’s enough license for the men of the
world to dictate rules on her body, her looks and her dressing. To the many
that take shameless pot-shots at a woman’s appearance, she is nothing more than
a joke, a stimulus for cruel laughter and insults.

I remember chatting online with a male
friend as the match was unfolding. I told him I wanted Marion Bartoli to win.
He said he preferred Sabine Lisicki. I asked him why he thought she was a
better player. “She is a better player?” he asked. “I have no idea. She just looks
better.”

There you go. Writing’s on the wall, and he
alluded to it.

Why is anything about a woman’s body and appearance anyone else’s business? Why is it that women can and are judged on their appearance all the time? What gives anyone any right to poke fun at a woman’s appearance?